The Contributor Staff Posts

The number of people missing or "unaccounted for" amid what experts are calling a thousand-year flood event in Colorado, is now more than 1,200, according to state newspapers and officials. Coming on the heals of forest fires and drought in the state, the rare late summer rains have created the "perfect storm" for what scientists see as a climate change-driven disaster.

According to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency spies on international credit card and banking transactions in a program called "Follow the Money," German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Sunday.

Free-market libertarians go to outrageous extremes to convince themselves and others of the infallibility of the market. Even when opposing evidence smacks them in the face, they conjure up sound bites that seem vaguely convincing but are in reality meaningless.

A renowned economist, Summers built close ties to President Barack Obama when he led the president's National Economic Council in 2009 and 2010. In that role, he helped orchestrate the administration's efforts to combat the financial crisis and the Great Recession.

Lake Mary Police Chief Steve Bracknell agreed in an email exchange that George Zimmerman is a “ticking time bomb.” Bracknell exchanged emails with Santiago Rodriguez, who reached out to the police chief through an online form following the latest incident involving Zimmerman and his estranged wife Shellie Zimmerman.

To hear the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch tell it, they’re all about business; they don’t give a whit about those messy, so-called “social issues” like abortion, contraception, or same-sex marriage. The billions they dump into the political coffers of the right, they’ll tell you, are to further what they call “free enterprise” and, more generally, “freedom."

Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray vetoed on Thursday a landmark bill that would mandate giant retailers pay a living wage, caving to public threats from Walmart that it would ditch plans to build up to six mega-stores in the city before it would agree to above-poverty pay.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is rejecting Syrian President Bashar Assad's suggestion Thursday that he begin submitting data on his chemical weapons arsenal one month after signing an international chemical weapons ban.

Elizabeth O’Bagy, who has been cited as an expert on Syria by numerous media outlets, was employed by the Institute for Study of War in Washington D.C., but has been terminated after it was discovered she did not hold a doctorate from Georgetown University as she had claimed.

Lynn Ellins stunned New Mexico last month when the county clerk decided to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But even he was shocked by the lack of public outrage or protest to his decision, which set off a chain reaction that has for all practical purposes made gay marriage legal in the state.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv on March 20.(Reuters/Nir Elias)The National Security Agency openly shares unfiltered intelligence files with the Israeli government, according to a classified document leaked to the Guardian newspaper by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Newly elected prime minister Tony Abbott, who has called the climate change argument "absolute crap" and campaigned on the promise to 'axe' global warming protections, is already taking steps to completely throw out a carbon tax, introduced in the latest term of the Labor government and initially set to expand by the year 2015.

Anthony Weiner's ill-fated mayoral campaign ended with a string of final embarrassments: He mustered a mere 5 percent at the ballot box. One of his sexting partners tried to crash his primary night rally. And Weiner was caught making an obscene gesture to reporters as he was driven away.

For the past couple of days I’ve been thinking about that video. You know the one that follows a 20-something white woman as she walks around New York City for 10 hours and receives a bunch of commentary and demands from men she doesn’t know. The video is effective.

Bill Nye the Science Guy has no patience with climate deniers like Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), whom he faced off with on a recent segment of CBS’s Meet The Press. Blackburn blithely dismissed his contention that climate change is real. Then Nye stepped in.